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Sumit SinghalSumit Singhal loves modern architecture. He comes from a family of builders who have built more than 20 projects in the last ten years near Delhi in India. He has recently started writing about the architectural projects that catch his imagination.

UNIVERSITY OF APPLIED SCIENCES in Bielefeld, Germany by Auer Weber Architekten BDA

The new building is located North of Peter Kulka’s 1976 planned University complex, one of the biggest University buildings in Europe. Small-scale housing and single and double family houses characterise the surroundings.

The urban concept highlights the dialogue to the existing University and is defined both by a clear volume and clearly landscaped green spaces.

The new building is to become the centre for the hitherto decentralized technical areas: Engineering, Mathematics, Social Services, Economy, Health, as well as the main installations of the University of Applied Sciences Bielefeld. This includes offices, meeting and conference rooms, seminar and practice rooms, labs of various types, workshops, experimentation halls, auditoriums, theatre labs, library, cafeteria, storage, archives and server rooms.

The compact volume reacts with its two sides to the urban requirements of the future campus and the landscaping requirements to the South. Northwards a clear edge is defined, which dissipates and opens up towards the southern green space. The urban approach, sequences of so-called “Hot Spots” become a compositional and functional element within an interior “Main Street” in the building.

The base with continuous circumferential height adapts within its interior to the downward sloping southern site, thereby forming a single-storey high area to the North and a split-level double-storey to the South. Variously sized courtyards provide structure and light to the interior of the base.

The courtyards, with their staggered U-forms and row-like volumes mesh in a comblike manner with the southern green space.

An abstract pattern covers the building without highlighting the interior uses or the individual floors and provides a homogenous appearance.

This is managed by a varying paneling of opaque and transparent coloured elements, which are integrated into an overall aluminium pilaster grid. The colour-scheme and distribution was developed together with the artist Josef Schwaiger.